Everything DoD says or does is partially American propaganda. (I say "propaganda", because "information war" is American propaganda.) And we are dealing with a

Everything DoD says or does is partially American propaganda. (I say "propaganda", because "information war" is American propaganda.) And we are dealing with a U.S. hegemon. It all started with American revolutionary war, and continued as "democratization". U.S. was based on an idea of liberating people from monarchs. And as U.S. set out to do that, DoD /CIA got really good at meddling other countries business. Now the original idea has been abandoned, democratization might not do any good anymore, even cold war is over, but Yankees still keep "power projecting". Institutions tend to keep on doing what they are good at. If powerful institution loses purpose, it invents a new one. Because there is certain "survival of the fittest" even when dealing with taxpayer money. And ultimately I'm grateful for this as a whole, because U.S. set a model of democratic free market society that has been copied and improved around the world. Back to propaganda. DoD is scared that other countries would increasingly use autonomous weapons in area denial missions. This would be really detrimental to "power projection". For example you don't wan't Chinese to use swaths of cheap autonomous boats to occupy south China sea. U.S. carrier fleet is way too expensive to deal with such saturation. Missile may cost more than entire boat. Other nasty possibility is cheap unmanned Cessnas flying around with short range Infra Red seeking missiles. That would make SEAD mission lot more demanding, as you need to kill the Cessna first and so notify everybody that "we are coming". U.S. is technology leader. Whatever Lockheed Martin does, is copied around the world. Whatever they don't do, gets significantly less eyeballs. DoD uses this as an advantage. Most recent example is infrared search and track(IRST). USAF was lacking in this respect just recently, because USAF has radar stealth. Putting money into IRST in late 80's would have been smart move to anybody else. But as DoD didn't do it, herd mentality went with RADAR. And USAF has stealth, nobody else does. Now U.S. employs autonomous weapons in assault missions in ground war. If other countries copy that tech, it does hardly anything to U.S. assets in air or sea. But for "short while" U.S. gets diminished casualties and even more frightening weapons. If people find autonomous weapons too inhumane in attack role of ground war, that might result in international ban of all autonomous weapons. Win-Win. We have precedent. DoD teaching Cambodian guerrillas to set up mines. -> Ottawa treaty. I'm not saying U.S. did that on purpose. But I'm pretty sure DoD military analysts's learned from that experience.